St. Laurent (French: ''Saint-Laurent'') is a community on the eastern shore of

Lake Manitoba Lake Manitoba () is the 14th largest lake in Canada and the 33rd largest lake in the world with a total area of . It is located within the Canadian province of Manitoba about northwest of the province's capital, Winnipeg, at . History The la ...

. It lies within the boundaries of the Rural Municipality of St. Laurent, from

Winnipeg Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Manitoba. It is centred on the confluence of the Red River of the North, Red and Assiniboine River, Assiniboine rivers. , Winnipeg h ...

. A historically-

Métis The Métis ( , , , ) are a mixed-race Indigenous people whose historical homelands include Canada's three Prairie Provinces extending into parts of Ontario, British Columbia, the Northwest Territories and the northwest United States. They ha ...

settlement, St. Laurent is one of the few remaining places in which the Michif French language is still spoken.

History

Prior to the arrival of European colonists, the area between Lake Manitoba and

Lake Winnipeg Lake Winnipeg () is a very large, relatively shallow lake in North America, in the Canadian province of Manitoba. Its southern end is about north of the city of Winnipeg. Lake Winnipeg is Canada's sixth-largest freshwater lake and the third- ...

was contested among the

Ojibwa The Ojibwe (; syll.: ᐅᒋᐺ; plural: ''Ojibweg'' ᐅᒋᐺᒃ) are an Anishinaabe people whose homeland (''Ojibwewaki'' ᐅᒋᐺᐘᑭ) covers much of the Great Lakes region and the northern plains, extending into the subarctic and thro ...

Cree The Cree, or nehinaw (, ), are a Indigenous peoples of the Americas, North American Indigenous people, numbering more than 350,000 in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations in Canada, First Nations. They live prim ...

, and

Sioux The Sioux or Oceti Sakowin ( ; Dakota/ Lakota: ) are groups of Native American tribes and First Nations people from the Great Plains of North America. The Sioux have two major linguistic divisions: the Dakota and Lakota peoples (translati ...

peoples for much of the 18th century, with the Ojibwa ultimately achieving dominance. In the 1730s, La Vérendrye was the first European to systematically explore the territory. By the early 19th century, the

interlake Interlake was a provincial electoral division in the Canadian province of Manitoba. It was created by redistribution in 1979, and has formally existed since the 1981 provincial election. Previously, much of the Interlake region was include ...

region of Manitoba was inhabited by Ojibwa

Saulteaux The Saulteaux (pronounced , or in imitation of the French pronunciation , also written Salteaux, Saulteau and Ojibwa ethnonyms, other variants), otherwise known as the Plains Ojibwe, are a First Nations in Canada, First Nations band governm ...

, but it is unclear if any of the groups lived in the immediate vicinity of St. Laurent when it was founded. St. Laurent was established as Fond du Lac in 1824 by Métis leaving

Pembina, North Dakota Pembina () is a city in Pembina County, North Dakota, United States. The population was 512 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Pembina is located south of the Canada–United States border, Canada–US border. Interstate 29 in North ...

. Pembina, located in

Rupert's Land Rupert's Land (), or Prince Rupert's Land (), was a territory in British North America which comprised the Hudson Bay drainage basin. The right to "sole trade and commerce" over Rupert's Land was granted to Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), based a ...

, had been recently ceded by Great Britain to the United States via the

Treaty of 1818 The Convention respecting fisheries, boundary and the restoration of slaves, also known as the London Convention, Anglo-American Convention of 1818, Convention of 1818, or simply the Treaty of 1818, is an international treaty signed in 1818 betw ...

, prompting the departure of the Métis there. More settlers arrived in 1826 as a result of flooding of the

Red River of the North The Red River (), also called the Red River of the North () to differentiate it from the Red River of the South, Red River in the south of the continent, is a river in the north-central United States and central Canada. Originating at the confl ...

, with further growth driven by Métis in search of land and traders seeking to take advantage of trade routes to the northwest. The economy centred around fishing and the fur trade, with settlers serving as intermediaries with

and

Assiniboine The Assiniboine or Assiniboin people ( when singular, Assiniboines / Assiniboins when plural; Ojibwe: ''Asiniibwaan'', "stone Sioux"; also in plural Assiniboine or Assiniboin), also known as the Hohe and known by the endonym Nakota (or Nakoda ...

people. Sometime after its establishment as a parish in 1858, the community was renamed St. Laurent, either after a Catholic priest who established the permanent mission there or after the martyr St. Lawrence. Additional Métis settlers moved to St. Laurent in the aftermath of the

Red River Rebellion The Red River Rebellion (), also known as the Red River Resistance, Red River uprising, or First Riel Rebellion, was the sequence of events that led up to the 1869 establishment of a provisional government by Métis leader Louis Riel and his f ...

ending in 1870. The broader area was formally incorporated as the Rural Municipality of St. Laurent in 1882.

French-Canadians French Canadians, referred to as Canadiens mainly before the nineteenth century, are an ethnic group descended from French colonists first arriving in France's colony of Canada in 1608. The vast majority of French Canadians live in the provi ...

Bretons The Bretons (; or , ) are an ethnic group native to Brittany, north-western France. Originally, the demonym designated groups of Common Brittonic, Brittonic speakers who emigrated from Dumnonia, southwestern Great Britain, particularly Cornwal ...

, and

Mennonites Mennonites are a group of Anabaptism, Anabaptist Christianity, Christian communities tracing their roots to the epoch of the Radical Reformation. The name ''Mennonites'' is derived from the cleric Menno Simons (1496–1561) of Friesland, part of ...

arrived in the first half of the 20th century.

Geography

The land is primarily glacial

till image:Geschiebemergel.JPG, Closeup of glacial till. Note that the larger grains (pebbles and gravel) in the till are completely surrounded by the matrix of finer material (silt and sand), and this characteristic, known as ''matrix support'', is d ...

with limited potential for agriculture, but it is suitable for some farming and livestock raising. The climate is

continental Continental may refer to: Places * Continental, Arizona, a small community in Pima County, Arizona, US * Continental, Ohio, a small town in Putnam County, US Arts and entertainment * ''Continental'' (album), an album by Saint Etienne * Continen ...

with high variation between seasons. St. Laurent is in the Red River region of Manitoba, which is prone to flooding, and the village last suffered a major flood in the spring and summer of 2011. St. Laurent has no central town square and is not exclusively organized around central roads, which is partially the result of the influence of the

seigneurial system of New France The manorial system of New France, known as the seigneurial system (, ), was the semi-feudal system of land tenure used in the North American French colonial empire. Economic historians have attributed the wealth gap between Quebec and other pa ...

, which allotted land with respect to the waterfront

Attractions

Attractions in St. Laurent and area include the following events and destinations. * Manipogo Festival is held at the end of the ice-fishing in March. * Manipogo Golf & Country Club near Twin Lakes Beach. * Meindl Beach and Big Tree Park * Métis Days * Métis Music Festival is held in the community of Oak Point yearly on the

labour day Labour Day is an annual day of celebration of the labour movement and its labor rights, achievements. It has its origins in the trade union, labour union movement, specifically the Eight-hour day movement, eight-hour day movement, which advoca ...

weekend.

Notes

References

* * * * * * * * * * * {{MBDivision18 Unincorporated communities in Manitoba Fishing communities Populated lakeshore places in Canada Fishing communities in Canada Métis in Manitoba

History

Geography

Attractions

See also

Notes

References